Range Rover Hybrid on the Silk Trail

A trio of Range Rover Hybrid s (pictured) on the Silk Trail The new Range Rover Hybrid (and the Range Rover Sport Hybrid too) are heading for a reveal at the Frankfurt Motor Show in a week or so, but they’re not quite ready for showrooms yet. Land Rover are still busy doing the final shakedown of the hybrid powerplant and have decided the best way is a high profile jaunt from Land Rover in Solihull to Mumbai in India following the ancient Silk Trail route to test the robustness of their new hybrid. So they garnered a trio of Range Rover hybrids – and support vehicles – enlisted a team consisting of Land Rover development engineers and motoring media from 10 countries, and set off from Solihull on 22nd August on the almost 10,000 mile expedition.

Ram truck gets new V6, eight-speed transmission

The Ram pickup scheduled to be introduced in April will offer both the Pentastar 3.6-liter V6 and an eight-speed transmission, according to a Chrysler Group filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The voluntary annual filing--which appeared Tuesday on the automaker's corporate Web site, chryslergroupllc.com--laid out many new features of the upcoming version of the automaker's top-selling vehicle. The new eight-speed transmission "reduces fuel consumption by up to 12 percent over our current five-speed transmissions," such as the one now in the Ram, the filing said.

VW eyes stake in Suzuki, report says

Volkswagen looks to stake an ownership stake in Suzuki Motor Co. by the end of this year, according to a report in Automobilwoche, a sister publication of AutoWeek. "We expect that there will be a basic agreement this year," the German-language publication quoted an unnamed Suzuki executive as saying.